This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jul 2, 2009
When conservative critics look at the field of history, one much repeated charge is that departments have obliterated fields like military history in favor of multiculturalism. And for those who have questioned the academy's commitment to military history in recent years, no institution has been more of a target than the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Wisconsin has for several years been trying to fill an endowed chair in military history and the length of the search (extended
Source: David Brooks in the NYT
Jul 2, 2009
On July Fourth, we think about our country and its future. But these days it’s impossible to think about America and its future role in the world without also thinking about China. This was the subject of a combative discussion this week at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
The agent provocateur was Niall Ferguson of Harvard. China and the U.S., he argued, used to have a symbiotic relationship and formed a tightly integrated unit that he calls Chimerica.
In this unit, China di
Source: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday
Jul 2, 2009
Alice L. Cochran, a historian and a professor at Webster University for nearly 40 years, died Saturday (June 27, 2009) after a stroke. She was 87.
Ms. Cochran was known for her dry wit and tenacity. In 1969, when she was paralyzed from the neck down by a nervous system disorder, she taught a History of the Americas course from her hospital bed by telephone. Another time, when she fell in class and broke her hip, she insisted she keep teaching the class, said a relative, Susan Scarpi
Source: Tony Judt in the NY Review of Books
Jul 2, 2009
I first met Amos Elon in Germany in the 1990s. We were participants in one of a series of meetings generously hosted by the Bertelsmann Foundation, where Germans, Israelis, and Jews gathered to exchange platitudes. Most of those present sought either to proselytize and grandstand (in the case of Israelis and Jews) or else to avoid giving offense (in the case of the Germans). Amos, uniquely, did neither. There, as on every occasion when I heard him speak, he succeeded in being both outspoken and
Source: Columbia University Press website
Jul 1, 2009
Q: Is there any need for a new book on Japanese Americans and World War II? Many have already been written, including one by you. Hasn’t everything important already been said about
Source: Barbara Kreiger in Smithsonian Magazine
Jul 1, 2009
Shielding my eyes from the glare of the morning sun, I look toward the horizon and the small mountain that is my destination: Herodium, site of the fortified palace of King Herod the Great. I'm about seven miles south of Jerusalem, not far from the birthplace of the biblical prophet Amos, who declared: "Let justice stream forth like water." Herod's reign over Judea from 37 to 4 B.C. is not remembered for justice but for its indiscriminate cruelty. His most notorious act was the murder
Source: Greg Grandin in The Nation
Jul 1, 2009
"Why William Appleman Williams, for God's sake?" asked Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 1999 when he learned that Williams's The Contours of American History had been voted one of the 100 best nonfiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. Schlesinger had spent the better part of half a century fighting the influence of Williams, describing him in 1954 as "pro-communist" to the president of the American Historical Association. In 1959 the New York Times picked Schl
Source: Missouri University of Science and Technology news release
Jul 1, 2009
Despite the stirring portrayal in “Band of Brothers,” Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division was not the first to enter Adolf Hitler’s Berchtesgaden mountain retreat near the end of World War II, says military historian Dr. John C. McManus in a new book.
It was actually the 7th Infantry Regiment that first took Berchtesgaden, writes McManus in “American Courage, American Carnage: 7th Infantry Chronicles: The 7th Infantry Regiment’s Combat Experience, 1812 Through World War II,”
Source: Atlantic
Jul 1, 2009
Hour by hour, day by day, Bill Buckley was just an exciting person to be around, especially when he was exhilarated by his love of sailing. He could turn any event into an adventure, a joke, a showdown. He loved risk. I saw him time after time rush his boat toward a harbor, sails flying, only to swerve and drop sail at the last moment. For some on the pier, looking up to see this large yacht bearing down on them, it was a heart-stopping moment. To add to the excitement, Bill was often standing o
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA blog
Jun 30, 2009
Despite the hardships in the economy, membership in the AHA actually increased slightly over the past year. In our annual membership snapshot (taken on March 31 of each year), membership rose to over 15,000 members for the first time in 35 years. While this marks an important milestone, in real terms the 15,055 members marked only a modest increase (just 152 more than last year).
And beneath the changes on the surface, there was a troubling loss in the number of members in many of t
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Jun 29, 2009
On June 23, 2009, the Historical Advisory Committee (HAC) met for the first time since the issuance of the Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) report on the operations of the Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State. The OIG recommended that Director of the Office of the Historian, Dr. Marc Susser, be replaced. As a result, Susser was reassigned within the St
Source: Niall Ferguson in the Financial Times
Jun 29, 2009
On Wednesday last week, yields on 10-year US Treasuries – generally seen as the benchmark for long-term interest rates – rose above 3.73 per cent. Once upon a time that would have been considered rather low. But the financial crisis has changed all that: at the end of last year, the yield on the 10-year fell to 2.06 per cent. In other words, long-term rates have risen by 167 basis points in the space of five months. In relative terms, that represents an 81 per cent jump.
Most commen
Source: Boston Globe
Jun 28, 2009
AMERICA IS OFTEN called a nation of joiners, and the landscape of any community testifies to our desire to belong - from the Masonic lodge to the city softball league to the suburban megachurch. This impulse spans the country, uniting citizens in a multitude of common purposes and communities to serve. Such civic engagement is seen as an obvious virtue.
But it wasn’t always seen that way. In fact, the founding fathers actually worried about it.
Historian Johann N. Neem
Source: Oliver Marre in the Guardian
Jun 28, 2009
What does history mean to you? Dusty tweed in ivory towers, perhaps, or a man of a certain age, with a slightly funny voice, being both caustic and informative on television? Does it mean tramping around a site of historical interest on a wet afternoon? Or, at best, a weighty tome read by an open fire.
Today's schoolchildren do not leap at the chance to study history - in fact, it's no longer even a core subject. The Conservative education spokesman, Michael Gove, says that history
Source: NYT
Jun 27, 2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has just signed a deal for his memoirs, reportedly worth around $2 million. President Bush, Laura Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice and Henry Paulson are also busy writing their takes on their roles in history. The political memoir, either as a summation of the author’s importance or payback to antagonists, has long been seen as a transition back to private life.
We asked several historians, what’s the best presidential or political
Source: Interview in the Independent (UK)
Jun 27, 2009
The home I grew up in ... was a removal van: my father was always going
broke.
When I was a child I wanted to be ... a nuclear physicist – but I'm
crap at geometry.
My greatest inspiration ... is emotional and psychological bravery
without cheap sensationalism.
The moment that changed me for ever ... was the birth of my first
child. My life since then has been a permanent spasm of involuntary
unselfishness.
My rea
Source: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr
Jun 27, 2009
Out of a pool of high-profile academics and artists, the parliamentary board for Parliament’s Honor Award has chosen Professor Kemal Karpat, historian, as the recipient of this year’s award.
The board consisted of five members from the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and one member from each of the following opposition parties: the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, and Democratic Society Party, or DTP.
Karpat was nomin
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jun 26, 2009
When Felix V. Matos Rodriguez was growing up in Puerto Rico in an extended family of sea captains, garment workers, teachers, and storytellers, the seeds of a lifelong fascination with Latino history were being sown.
Next month he will take over as president of Hostos Community College of the City University of New York, which in 1970 opened in a converted tire factory in the South Bronx to educate members of a primarily Puerto Rican community.
Like Mr. Matos Rodriguez,
Source: Press Release--University of Richmond
Jun 26, 2009
While summer is often believed to be a time of rest and relaxation for K-12 teachers, more than two dozen high school teachers from 20 states will spend next week as students of"The South in American History," a course taught by University of Richmond president Edward L. Ayers. The course is part of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
The course will cover the Colonial period, Civil War and the 20th Century, with students visiting Jamestown, the Slave Trail in Richmond (inc
Source: http://www.gamezone.com
Jun 25, 2009
Mamba Games is pleased to announce that they have acquired the European, Australian/NZ and Eastern Europe (including Russia) rights for ‘Making History II: The War of the World’ developed by Muzzy Lane Software.
Developed in partnership with renowned economic historian and policy icon Niall Ferguson, MAKING HISTORY II: The War of the World marks a dramatic step forward in the Making History series. From the factories and shipyards on the home front, to epic battles across the globe,
